Erika's Blog
by Random Name Inserted Here
Summary: Personal Info: If you see this then you probably already knew I've got magick in me, that I'm an Elf, and I take no bull from any mundane snark. Since you're here, though, I'll offer you some public domain on a recent event with a suit and his credstick.


He called himself a samurai cowboy. Ronin gunslingers? Oh, so terribly original, even though it was obvious he wasn't packing anything significant in his trencher. The poor boy looked too thin and a few cyberpieces short to be a threatening-looking sammy, and if he was an adept, he didn't walk like one worth being scared of.

At three AM at the "Lolly Doll," though, no one else cared except for gangers and bartenders. But gangers only cared if you took their good seats and bartenders cared if you were stiffing your tab with an ancient credstick. Go figure that this yahoo decided to do just that, and go figure that I still had jet lag from my last run.

"What the hell you take me for, chummer? We serve drinks, not artifacts. Hey, why don't you sell that to the mage over there. Those things are so old that it probably would make good to some old day dandy eater."

The man did not take well to his jokes, and if I wasn't swearing off at some contact you don't need to know about I'd have given him something for that. Stupid that he was, though, he did have something right in that head of his: credsticks were old hat. It did not stop samurai-san from pulling back his coat like a curtain to reveal a daisho all tucked under his belt like some Renraku exec at Halloween.

Of course, the bartenders don't care. Every one of them usually has something hidden away underneath their bars. This one had a Roomsweeper, and only a moron would keep theirs filled with blanks, even an elf hater.

"Don't make this rough on you." The ronin said to him the way you'd expect one of these gag makers to do. "The Fuchioka school has not lost its touch."

"Cute, but this is a bar, not a pawn shop."

Figures that would be when I'd come up out of interest. The bartender gives me a quick look-over with one cybered eye before asking me, "So you gonna pay his tab or not?"

I give a nod, and the shotgun gets put away. But of course he still gives me a sneer because he knows I wasted five minutes of his time by being five minutes late to the rescue. But I wasn't interested until he mentioned that term. But I'm not going to tell him that. Not yet.

As you'd expect one of his kind, he gives me a cardboard cutout bow. He's a handsome fellow, I'll give him that. Strong cheek features and thin black hair grown to his shoulders. Not fluffy like a mullet, thank the spirits, because I hope that hair style never comes back for another century again. He's traditional looking enough, though, and I'd definitely take him home to momma if she wasn't possessed by bug spirits and now stained some empty building in Chicago.

"I am Ryu," he says in this formal voice as I step out and he follows.

"How nice," I add, because this formality thing is so tacky.

He's still following me, and I don't want to pay him any attention. Of course, though, I know it's him because he keeps following me. He's no silent walker, and I don't even have to put up clairaudience to tell where he's walking. That daisho in his trencher gives off as much noise as a troll walking on one foot. I try to lose the sap. Oh, I give him the works. Into the streets, past the Lone Star stations, along the factories, into an abandoned building and then out again in an invisibility field, which worked until I had held it out for too long and he caught up to me. This man is persistent, and I don't like persistent men. I'm one tick off from giving him a Powerbolt, so I give it to him straight.

"Listen, just because I fed you doesn't mean I'm going to keep you. I'm not a shaman and I don't have any love for animals, especially ones running around playing samurai."

Of course, leave it to then that Chad comes over my way. They say love is dead? Chad must have been the one that choked Cupid for some cigs and a half-empty bottle of poorly synthed liquor. I must be slipping in my skill, because he was apparently following me, dressed in that awful ratty synthleather jacket (why did I tell him it looked cute?).

"Hey honey," he gives me like we're still dating. "This corpse giving you some trouble?"

Chad's a decent spellslinger, if he didn't get so full of himself. Don't know how bad he is? On my birthday, he gave me a tome because "I could be as good as him." Sumimasen, Chad, but one: I don't have a thing for homework, and two: I hope you die. Told him that for his birthday along with a my breakup and he still thinks I'm playing hard to get. The only thing hard to get is for him to get the hint.

That gets the guy's attention, just like how competition gets Chad's. Okay, perhaps a chance to get two men out of my life once and for all.

"He's been following me like a tail all day." This of course, gets Chad's attention the most and before you can say, "shoving tomes down your pants," he's readying a spell on him. But of course that follower wouldn't stop right there, would he? No, he reaches for his handle and you know the rest.

You don't though, would you? Well sad to say it, but I was surprised at what happened in the end. You know what happens in stories like these whenever someone says that.

That's right, chummer. Tall, dark, and silent got his sword handed to him.

I would have thought that that would have been that, but Chad was being his usual "high and mighty" self. It doesn't help that he's been reading too much elf politics to just take him down and notch and leave him there, but he also then begins to pick at him.

"Chad, you baka. Leave him alone."

"Babe, didn't you see that credstick?"

Duh. Still, I don't play vulture on people that don't deserve it. It's not about ethics, just guilt.

"Get off his cred. Those things are worthless these days and even you know that."

"Shut up, woman, you're not going to complain after I treat you to that nice place you like so much. You know, the one built out of that old missile silo where you said it was hot."

That did it for me. He got a Powerbolt in the back for saying that. Nothing too powerful, but enough to make him regret telling me to shut up. Besides, that stupid restaurant is his favorite place and only because he eyes the dancing meat market they have there.

Now I'm dragging my sorry hero's butt to my apartment and put him in my bed. Who would have thought that I would be doing that? I've never even let any of my most closest runner mates get a look at my house and Chad never got a chance to sleep in it (and he never will, no matter how much he'll try to get a good jacking from me). I hate to admit it, but he was becoming a pet.

I slept on my couch after pushing off my clothes and when I woke up there was the smell of coffee in the air.

"Ohayo gosaimasu," I hear. Oh god, he's still here.

"What the hell are you doing here?" The first thing any woman of my caliber does whenever a man invades her private domain is fix her hair.

The next is to find the nearest object to throw in his face to get out. I end up reaching and pull up a book too valuable for me to throw no matter how mad I am. Then I reach again and get a wad of used panties. He's coming to me with a tray, and of course now he shows off by dodging my throw (not like it's hard).

"You saved my life again." He puts down the tray and there're two cleaned mugs filled with coffee. "I am indebted to you." He gives me no smile like he almost hates my company. It wasn't the underwear, though, because he looked just as constipated before I flung it. I wish he didn't see it, though. It was a bunch of laceys Chad bought me that I wore when there was nothing left to wash. If you're still alive and reading this Chad, then I hope you remember that.

He's standing there by me. I give him a good look over again and he still doesn't seem like he wants to sit. He's become a butler.

"Take a seat."

I gave up. Don't think you could use this trick on me, because I was just tired then. If you try this on me, I'll powerbolt your eyes out and leave you with the trash.

He takes a seat on the other side of the couch I'm on, still dressed as neatly as ever in that corp suit that he must have ironed. I'm thinking of maybe getting him out of my sight by having him clean my apartment, but the thought of a stranger going through my things disgusts me.

"Why were you in the Lolly Doll anyway?" I was there because I was waiting for some info from a no-show contact on a potential Johnson.

"The Lolly Doll?" His face gives that hunky stupid expression in response. "You mean that place where you were?"

"You got it. Don't tell me you think that you'd get away with anything because you've got a suit, a pair of swords, and know an old martial art."

He blinked in response, because he was probably surprised that I wasn't just a pretty face. "You are familiar with the Fuchioka art of the Lotus?"

Yeah, of course I knew. For you mundanes that never heard of it, it was one of those old martial arts that get banned in their day because people without magic could only poke metal sticks at each other. There were supposedly a few old books here and there on old arcane arts that said it may have been an adept's art, but I think it's as true as some of those "100 real beef" burgers you can sometimes find at some of the slophouses.

"If it's old, then I probably know about it," I snicker to myself before I take a drink of the coffee. He may have been a deadbeat, but he knew how to brew a good cup.

"So you may help me with this then?" He reaches into his pocket and shows me, guess! Yes, that worn out piece of plastic called a credstick.

"That thing? Throw it away." I don't even give it a second look.

"But I was told someone would help me open it at the Nai Five."

Hold on a minute. Nai Five? Believe it or not, your smartass narrator had no idea what that place is.

"What're you talking about, chummer?" I finish the mug and he starts to take it from me to refill it. Since he's doing this for me, I drink his second cup, which is right next to the credstick. He didn't take a drink from it anyway.

"That device is connected with an old relative of mine who died," he tells me while he's in my kitchen like he owned it.

"Tough luck, but this dead end town's full of those sob stories."

He returns with the mug. "He was a lead designer for a Swiss company." He thinks for a minute as he leaves me the full cup. "SaCeCo."

"Never heard of it."

"They helped convert the Swiss banks old systems to the new standard."

"They should have paid your relative using that system, then."

Okay, maybe I was being hard on him, but you need to know that I'm a woman that likes her space and this man was walking all over mine. His coffee was good enough for me to tolerate him, and his face was cute enough for me to look at instead of swear off. It didn't matter, anyway, because Ryu just kept looking at me as though I was some Mister Johnson that could throw some runners his way.

So I sighed again.

"Look, Ryu. You're cute." You don't believe how much effort it took to say that. "And you may have something interesting about you, but if you can't tell by all the books around here, hacking isn't my specialty."

"But you are a runner, are you not?"

The poor boy was too damn thick.

"Runners don't spend their Fridays having company picnics with each other, chummer. The corporate model doesn't apply here if you can't tell."

"But do you have friends?"

"Runners don't have friends, you moron." I pick up his credstick and prepare to throw the stupid thing into his lap before I notice the old thing has a rimmed edge that isn't eaten up like the rest of the plastic junk. The rim's got an iron edge, but they don't call it iron; they like to think it's "platinum."

"Where did your relative get this thing?"

"His note had something to do with a project they were researching."

A platinum credstick potentially worth a few hundred thousand, huh? Maybe he was speaking my language after all.

"Okay, maybe I can find you something useful after all. But first you have to do something for me."

"I am at your service," He says like a butler. Oh, how I could eat up any man that does that to me.

"Clean my room up, and then we'll get to business."

Leave it to the corps to teach their men to be good little house husbands. This one did everything I asked without a word of complaint. Chad usually would be the one telling me to shut up before he would tell me to clean up after him. I was tempted to make a mess for my little servant, but if I wanted to abuse my power, I would have asked him to striptease as he worked instead.

Don't think I was wasting my time fantasizing about him, though that's not a bad idea. I was keeping contact with an ex-decker-gone-suit that used to brag about her skill before the otaku took over the 'Net after Crash 2.0 (and you bet she's pissed about it). I kept tabs on old colleagues and Charlee was a sweetheart.

"Yeah?" Her vidphone was covered up like she always liked to do. Usually because she was always too busy decking to think about her looks but was thoughtful enough to think of how sloppy she looked.

"Charlee, you still alive?"

"Erika, you look like shit. Glad I could see you."

"Fun and games until someone gets bolted in the eye. Got a story for you."

"You know me, gal, I like stories if they have happy endings."

So I tell her a bit of everything. One credstick, one man that never walked this side of the tracks, and everything else except for Chad's dilemma (because she always was sweet on that prick).

"Oh, a man? So you are jacking someone these days."

"Shut up, Charlee, I'm stroking no one's ego, especially a suit."

"Even one I can see sweeping your floor?"

As soon as I turn, I see Ryu with a broom that I never knew I had dusting up. I slap my palm on the vidphone's lens.

"It's so hard to get men like that around here. He do windows? I wouldn't mind seeing him dance behind one."

"You're such a bitch."

"Now that I know what you've got, I'm going to need a better cut of that share."

"He's not part of the deal, baka, he's the client."

"Doesn't mean I wouldn't mind giving him a personal look over like you did."

I sigh. I should have gotten Chucky G instead, but I still owed him for a favor the last time we talked. One heavy favor instead of this was looking good, though.

"All right, deal. But take a BTL before you come here, this kid's a little too pure for your style."

Charlee may have been approaching middle age for an ork, but that didn't mean she didn't stop dressing to get people to notice. Time was good on her, or should I say that her plastic surgeons were just as good. That's the beautiful thing about not having any talent in you: if you start to look old, then you can take a few trips to the local skin surgeon and beautify yourself without worrying about it fizzling your incantations. The dataport I had grafted for this blog alone was a bitch.

Anyway, as soon as Charlee gets in she gives Ryu the first look over as soon as she gets the chance and offers him a low whistle. He paid no attention to it, of course, and that gets her to business and out of my goddamn hair.

"Credstick?"

He hands it to her and she takes it from his hands as though it was a wedding ring, but we get back to the real business soon enough. She brought her equipment, including a wireless laptop and her old Casio deck that she "claimed" was better than an Excalibur (come on, even I know nothing beat an Excaliber) that looks beat to shit. The credstick goes into one of the ports and she starts scanning through it. Then she gives the low whistle again, but it ain't the man that's exciting her.

"Hybrid operating system…!"

"Excuse me, what?"

She flashes a smile at me that tells me she's loving this. "This ain't no ordinary credstick, chummer. You've got the old OS fused with some sort of internal chipset that acts as an additional security countermeasure and some sort of bypass override using a specific hard and software signature interface." Uh, no, I didn't get what the hell she said either, but it got her going. "If this stick didn't look beat to hell, I'd say that there's something more valuable inside then just a few million nuyen."

Just a few nuyen? Sounds to me like Charlee's been dipping a bit too deeply into that corp budget of hers. But I look at Ryu again who's actually interested in what she's saying to give him a question: "What was that company's name?"

"SaSeCo."

That makes Charlee even more interested. "Saga Securities Conglomerate?"

"You know what the hell that is. C?"

"You've got to get some use out of that jack, girl. SaSeCo was one of the groups in the bidding war for the new financial interface post-credstick."

"You mean they didn't get it?"

"You dandy, read the news. They were bought by one of the other bidders that won before they even had a chance to present."

I'd bitch her out for calling me a dandy, but what she said was interesting enough. It must have been a good system if they were bought out in the open like that just to get that design.

"So this credstick is, what?"

Charlee shook her head, with the board on her still running hot. "Whatever it is, it's hot. The deck's running the data and I can tell you from how the thing looks so far that you ain't going to hack this with one of the newer systems without it thinking the entire thing's junked. I'm going to need to do some more research on this, but I can tell you the data on that stick alone's worth some good nuyen."

"Save it for now, C. There's other things we need to figure out."

The one thing that I figured out easy enough was that confusion with the Lolly Doll. At first I didn't get what my handsome client was saying, but then I realized what his confusion was: The Lolly Doll looks like something else if you were the look at the letters in Korean.

Nai Five, though, was something I couldn't figure out yet.


End file.
